(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
A Note to Readers
The Feature this week presents an organization name change. I have been, as some of my readers have noted, an active associate of the late Lyndon LaRouche. Often I have included articles from my organization, LaRouche PAC. The Feature this week announces that LaRouche PAC is in the process of changing its name to Promethean Action. An article and a link to the Mission Statement of Promethean Action can be read beginning on page 10 of this report.
After two weeks of high impact atmospheric rivers soaking California, especially the southern part of the state, flooding and mud slides have caused significant damage. The opening sections of this week’s report cover that.
But, while some snow fell in the Sierras and the Rockies, the snow level is still below the average for this date of the year. So, the “snow drought” is still with us.
An article from Ag Alert provides the reader with an excellent overview of where California’s water comes from and where it goes. And urges the state and federal government to once again, as they did before the 1970s, to build the water infrastructure that will ensure that California can remain the greatest food producing region in the world.
Edward Ring has another contribution to a sane and workable water policy for the state in his article, “California is Hardly Harvesting the Deluge.” He writes:
“California’s water agencies are letting millions of acre feet of fresh water pour into the San Francisco Bay every year
“A historic barrage of atmospheric rivers hit California. Across the Sierra Nevada and down through the foothills into the valley, rivers turned into raging torrents, overflowing their banks and flooding entire communities. California’s Central Valley turned into an inland sea, as low lying farms and grasslands were incapable of draining the deluge.
“That was 1861, when one storm after another pounded the state for 43 days without respite. Despite impressive new terminology our experts have come up with to describe big storms in this century – “bomb cyclone,” “arkstorm,” and “atmospheric river” – we haven’t yet seen anything close to what nature brought our predecessors back in those pre-industrial times over 150 years ago. But we are getting rain this year. Lots of rain.”
Two articles on the impact of the storms on the Colorado River are summarized thus, “If you’re watching the weather, it’s still a little early to tell whether these storms will go where they can help Las Vegas the most. That’s anywhere in the Upper Colorado River Basin, where there’s a chance they could produce snow to help the river that supplies 90% of the water used in Southern Nevada.”
Meanwhile, across the West, drought has a Hold on some states, and the Texas reservoirs reach dangerous lows.
The report concludes with the Feature, discussed above.
